Gaming and other nerd things by Sean Menken. Updates Weekly

The 100 on the surface sounds like little more than a focus group tested, demographic pleasing triumph of mediocrity. It’s based off of a YA dystopia series with a female lead and it airs on the CW. But despite a rocky start, the first season developed a compelling cast of characters who shone through a less than fully developed setting. While it had its bad moments, the first word I always thought of to describe the show was ‘competent’. It was the moments that rose above that competence and were able to evoke some emotional response that had me stay through the rocky start and look forward to the second season. Now that I’ve been able to watch it a second time, as it’s available via Netflix streaming, it seemed like a good time for me to gather my thoughts and share.

While season two retained the core of season’s one appeal, it also seemed to gather a lot more crud around it. This is partly because of the longer season and partly due to the tonal shift that the show takes. Season two is 16 episodes, three more than season one, and it does not use them well. Plots meander to a conclusion and there are a lot of B plots that don’t really go anywhere. (This also makes the show pretty poor when binge watching it compared to spacing out episodes) These plots are entertaining enough, but they don’t connect well together in a cohesive whole. It’s a testament to the characters, the acting and writing carries them above the incomplete world they operate in. What matters is that you are entertained in this scene, in this episode, not that the whole season makes sense, because it doesn’t.

In terms of tone, the show was never cheerful, but the characters were never cavalier about the terrible things they did. There was always a moral voice of dissension; but those protestations wear thin over repeated use and become less frequent. The territory that show goes into by the end has me calling the show downright nihilistic. A post apocalyptic set up where all factions find they have no choice in doing horrible things, repeating the sins of the past.

On a technical level, the show has either improved or maintained its competence. The scenery is what you’d expect, well-made indoor sets and the woods of Vancouver. The actors have grown into their characters and the new characters are unremarkable at the very worst. The special effects and fight cinematography are fairly impressive, considering that this is a TV show. The music is the only downside, as the usage of whatever flavor of pop is in vogue is gratuitous and annoying.

Despite these flaws, it’s worth repeating that the characters still work and that there are still moments when something shines through. It’s flawed, but it’s still entertaining enough that if you liked the first season and don’t mind the problems I outlined then you should at least give it a shot.

When talking about season two, it’s important to start with the show’s structure. There are 16 episodes, that aired as two half seasons. The first half is concerned with the fallout from the season one finale. Fallout in this case means several things: getting everyone who isn’t in Mount Weather back together, hashing out the leadership of the Sky People, ending the conflict with the Grounders and setting up the Mountain Men as the new antagonists. A lot of these plotlines involve Finn, so it makes sense to focus in on him compared to a more thorough but less substantive checklist view.

Finn was the one who saw history repeating itself and did everything he could to stop it from passing. His was the dissenting moral voice that often got drowned out by forces beyond his control but he served as a physical manifestation of moral boundaries. In the second season, this is discarded as he becomes obsessed with finding Clarke. He has no problems in ambushing Grounders, executing prisoners, leaving someone to die, or massacring a village. The ideas that Finn would go to great lengths to find Clarke and that all the shit he’s seen have finally started to get to him aren’t bad, but it’s a note that the writers keep hitting so the impact is dulled with each subsequent use. But those sequences, however good they may be in their own right, aren’t taken as a whole; they cease to exist once the episode is over. Hitting that note over and over again is a poor writing technique, but it’s one that works on some level. Furthermore, it’s just a buildup to what Finn’s purpose in the season: the village massacre.

Finn’s credibility as the moral dissenter is wiped away, his crime largely ignored by the rest of the Sky People and used to reinforce the conflict with the Grounders. It’s incredibly tacky and distasteful. The build up to the massacre itself strains credibility and the response from the other Sky People is disturbingly muted. What should be a major event is quickly brushed over by everyone until the Grounders force them to deal with it.

The Mount Weather plotline, for the entire season, works with exception. The fact that it is entirely predicated upon poor communication is sloppy. Dante never reaches out to Abby or Kane or gives a reason for just banking on the 47 to fix the radiation problem. While one can argue that it’s a part of the season’s theme of how humans are doomed to poor communication and war, it’s executed in a poor manner.

One of the conceits of YA fiction is that adults are useless, and The 100 follows on that trope, at least with the Skye People. It goes out of its way to make Abby, Kane and Jaha useless. The first two rehash their conflict from the first season, which is annoying, moreso because the show points that out. All of three of them are focused on the whole and are willing to sacrifice the people inside Mount Weather in order to keep everyone else alive(or just act contrary) in order to engender conflict with Clarke. Our heroes, through crafty planning and circumstances outside their control, end up calling the shots. It works well enough, but the circumstances involved aren’t terribly engaging once you move out of the target demographic.

So the half season ends with Finn killed to cement and the Mountain Men moving onto bone marrow to fix their problems. (There’s some spectacularly bad science this season) Which sets the stage for waging a war on Mount Weather….that somehow lasts for eight episodes. The show can now engage in retreading history and engaging in the worst accepts of human nature largely unstopped. A lot of these plotlines are actually good and it’s a not the worst attempt at being an ensemble, but there are two worth talking about: Clarke and Jaha.

Clarke shows that she’s from the Ark as she becomes hardened, with encouragement from Lexa and only stops after committing genocide. While she does at least recoil at the end of the season, I’m really not interested in watching grimdark shows where the Heroes are Hard People making Hard Decisions. While Lexa being the exact opposite of Finn and pushing Clarke to be harder is something I’m not on board with, I am happy for more diversity with Clarke being Bi (the show not saying the word is a different matter though) I’m also not really keen on shows being self aware of things and thinking that their self awareness means recycling tropes is good; but Kane’s exchange with Abby in the ruins of Tondic really sold me this time, even if it is short of payoff.

Kane: Clarke escaped? She knew it was coming?

Abby: Yes. How could she do something like this?

Kane: Because she grew up on the Ark. Because she learned things from us.

Abby: She let this happen. She could’ve stopped it.

Kane: She made a choice. Like executing people for stealing….medicine…and food. Like the sucking the air from the lungs of 300 parents so they could save their children.

Abby: Like floating the man you love to save your people.

Kane: Yes, we have to answer for our sins Abby.

Abby: After everything we done, do we even deserve to survive?

Jaha is a man who has lived his life making impossible decisions and feeling sorry about it. He’s a finished character, while Kane and Abby have some degree of self-awareness and want to move beyond that, Jaha can’t. He’s sorry that he made those decisions, but he’s not sorry that he carried them out. Not only that, but he needs to believe that his story isn’t over, that everything means something, and he won’t tolerate anyone getting in his way. He’ll sacrifice anyone to further his own story. Jaha isn’t exactly a good guy and his whole arc this season was set up for next season.

Which brings us to the other problem that the season has with a lot of build up and not a lot of payoff. Clarke needs to answer for what she did, not just self imposed exile. Jaha needs to be guided to burn the world again for starters. But the status quo being shaken up by the Grouder-Sky People alliance dissolving is somewhat nonsensical in and of itself, but it throws a lot of stuff sideways. The ending is fine, but there’s no real denouement so it’s just leaves the feeling of now what? And not in a good way. Sadly, we have to wait till next year for season three.

The 100 isn’t the best show on the air right now, but it is an entertaining and interesting show. I just hope that season three can move past the flaws of the first two seasons. I don’t know what I’ll be talking about next week. Till next time.